Has the Apache open source vision become blurred?

Arguments ensue between pro-Apache and Github enthusiasts but what is the future for open source?

It may be a cliché but the software world is rapidly changing
and always in a state flux by welcoming a vast array of new
languages and new thinking, through the advent of open source for
example, the industry has been rife with breakthroughs over the
last decade.

Analysts have been lauding Github for instigating the
distributed version control model to nearly all open source
technologies, through their dynamic social coding structure
offering person to person communication system for
contributions without a system of governance of the other
competitors.

You’d have to be completely blind to not see the impact that
they’ve had with recruiting users to the forge. Statistics from
RedMonk’s Stephen O’Grady chart Github’s stratospheric growth over
such a short period of time. Back in 2010,
O’Grady prophesied that Git would be at the focal point of the open
source community, impelling vendors and foundations to switch
towards a decentralised model.

Further analysis in this post
by Chris Aniszczyk shows how Git has become the people’s SCM
choice, as you can ascertain from the astronomical growth since
2010. Git and Mercurial are the two on the rise, but Subversion is
still hanging on to a sizable chunk of interest. The big loser
appears to be the now outdated CVS, without any form of distributed
revision control.

Apache has faced a lot of criticism in
the past few days for their perceived unwillingness to embrace the
now open source standard – with some even suggesting that Apache
has lost its way. Others suggested that Apache was focusing on the
sense of community and not the code itself. Elsewhere Mikael Rogers
created a stir with
his blogpost saying

While Apache’s aversion to git has
been known for some time among insiders, it only recently boiled to
the surface and became somewhat common public knowledge when the
CouchDB project initiated a migration to git from subversion. A lot
of the discussion happened on closed email lists, of which I
personally had limited access, but I do know that the move was met
with fierce opposition from much of the ASF leadership (many of
whom are subversion committers).

Bold claims. Rogers did acknowledge
that some at Apache were trying to push the case for Git being
used, but their voices were ‘drowned in the politics of an aging
organization resistant to change’

The Eclipse Foundation’s
Mike Milinkovich waded into the debate, suggesting that
implications that Apache and other foundations (like his own) had
outgrown open source were either premature or outright wrong. The
Eclipse overseer admitted he was resistant to change but had his
head turned by others within the community. After all, a community
Eclipse has already announced that they will shut down CVS
and SVN at the end of 2012 for Git showing that more or less
everyone now has embraced Git and Github.

As for Apache, it seems fairly
clear-cut. Adopt Git/Github quick like the flock or face further
criticism!